In short, Al-Qaida, for whom Samira indirectly was active for in Iraq, was doing what Hitler, Jim Jones, and the Bush-Cheney administration had done.
They played on the fact that they could control information and manipulate the youth and adults whom they worked with by playing on love for culture, faith, tribe, or family/.
Recall that in the Iraq of the Baathist (or Sadam Hussein) era that the media and PUBLIC ART was controlled by the Baath party. Only Sadam Hussein and Baathist party statues or monuments could be created in those days.
Starting in 2003, there would be no more statues from Saddam Hussein and the despondent youth and adults in Iraq reverted to pre-Baathist cultural and religious identities.
In the last 6 years, there were few alternative memorials created in Iraq—even in the ruins for the world that Hussein had left behind and that Americans and their allies had helped create.
Ruins, however, remind only of loss and do not teach the stupidity of endless wars and other educational factors cultivated in Iraqi poverty of recent decades.
The U.S. should both build memorials to this war of stupidity in the USA and leave memorials that can teach peace and reconciliation whenever they leave (or after they have left) a land. Like the German government, American church’s and states need to even pay in foreign countries for monuments of apology, which are to be maintained for eternity to remember the crimes to be commemorated.
What do you think?
In the meantime, religious leaders must control their messages less and teach adults and children to identify stupidity where they see it.
Moreover, I believe that church leaders or mosque leadership need to stop using the terms suicide or martyr for what is a cruel and horrific act of self immolation, i.e. with each suicide bomber or freedom fighter. (This includes soldiers of nations who considered themselves to be freedom fighters as they invaded Iraq.)
Only by building permanent education campaigns which include permanent memorials as historical witness for crimes will we grow up spiritually and mentally as nations and statesmen.
Appendix 1: Anniversaries in 2009 of last 300 years of German historyAs some of the readers of my writings may have noticed, I am spending a bit of time this year in Germany. This is a particularly interesting year to be in Germany witnessing the struggle which present day Germans always face in dealing with history, culture, and religious heritage.
You see…. This is the 20th anniversary of the Wall separating East and West Germany being opened up.
2009 is also the 60th anniversary of the modern federal German democratic republic.
2009 is the 65th anniversary of the failed coup of von Stauffenburg and other generals.
It is the 70th anniversary of Hitler’s Nazi Germany invading both Czechoslovakia and Poland, i.e. officially kicking off the European portion of WWII. (It is also when the Nazis signed a secret treaty to divide up Poland and the Baltic states.)
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